Focus on enjoyable customer experiences has led many to create focused, unfussy websites that provide clear messages and unforgettable images.

Open source platforms and social media have played a large part in perpetuating this trend. The rise of the smartphone means we're more comfortable with scrolling experiences, so content can be dispersed down the page.

The internet in general is encouraging a fightback again corporate globalisation (though perhaps these are simply our death throes?), with everything from homespun craft available through Etsy and crowdsourced cycle routes on Strava.

I watched John Kearns perform recently (a storytelling comic that won the Edinburgh Comedy Award) and he had one line designed to show how much he wanted to return to a more personal world.

He spoke about seeing tourists in the more garish areas of London promoted by guidebooks, such as Picadilly Circus, and how he wanted to talk to each of them and tell them about the really niche and beautiful parts of London, often tucked in neighbourhoods that tourists never make it to.

I'm getting to the point here. lastminute.com has produced a lovely piece of content designed to show parts of London that only the discerning have discovered*. It's called 100 Things in London and it's a nice bit of content marketing.

Let's take a look and I'll attempt to point out why it should go well.

I’ve only recently been thinking about Gmail and its trial of grid view, though the trial has been happening since the end of March 2014.

The announcement had passed me by until I chatted to someone from an email build company that specialises in creative use of imagery. See this post on agile creative in email.

If you’re not familiar with Gmail’s grid view, it’s the ‘Pinterest-isation’ of the promotions tab in Gmail’s tabbed inbox, currently only for addresses that end in gmail.com.

There’s an example of such a ‘Pinterested’ inbox further down this post.

The tabbed inbox itself is a bit of a mixed blessing for marketers. On the one hand, it encourages intent on the part of the consumer. She only engages with promotions when she feels inclined to do so, and your message is less likely to have disappeared into the morass of personal or social email in other tabs.

On the other hand, she, the user, may never click on that promotions tab. The implications of such tendencies, I’ll go into further down this post.

But what are the implications of Gmail’s grid view? Here are some ideas…

When it comes to shopping, consumers have always preferred a more tactile and visual experience.

The growth of ecommerce and social networks like Pinterest means that brands are increasingly allowing, even encouraging, consumers to share images of products online.

Here, I'll look at how the mobile revolution and the prospect of wearable technologies like Google Glass are set to change how retailers can use images to drive both brand awareness and, ultimately, sales.

So here’s the bad news. It’s no longer enough for your site to be ‘usable’ and ‘intuitive’. Today’s best in breed online retailers mastered the usability thing a while back and have long moved on.

To survive in a competitive market your site must also draw customers in, provide ideas, inspiration and help all without being overly attentive and obtrusive.

Whether your site is selling high fashion or stationery, we can all learn something from the most successful online retailers. We used whatusersdo.com to find out what was working best on two big fashion retail sites: ASOS and H&M.

Here are the five key themes both have hit upon to help them to their success.